CENTRES AND CENTRALITIES
This map shows the circumnavigation journey of the ship Victoria of Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition, from and to Sevilla, thus the first ship ever to circumnavigate the Planet (1519-1522 CE).
Geography is the science which studies space and its construction, not only its physical construction but also its social/political one. In other terms geography can be the discipline in quest for meaning of space. And cartography is the science of interpretation of power relations and communicating it via maps. In the light of these tow definitions we exposed, on this site, the rapports between the political centre, space and representation in some famous maps. First we worked on the maps of Heinrich Bunting: Jerusalem and Europe. Then we saw the Dutch Lion of Visscher.
Today our map is the BOHEMIAE ROSA, by Chr. Vetter, Vienna, 1668, a map representing Bohemia as a rose centred on Prague.
The map we are presenting here is spectacular: Le tour du Monde en un clin d’oeil (the world in the blink of an eye) is an example of how “we” tend to put ourselves...
“Au mois d’avril 1768, le chapitre de Notre-Dame de Paris a fait placer dans son parvis, au pied de la tour septentrionale de son église, une pierre triangulaire, du milieu de laquelle sort un...
We said that the “centre of the world” is a notion which always stems from social construction, from human perception and not from a physical reality. In this regard we do know, today, that Jerusalem is not a physical centre of our Planet; unless we followed the idea that all points of the Planet are its centre: so Jerusalem would be one out of an infinity.
Romeyn De Hooghe (Amsterdam 1654 – Haarlem 1708) was a Dutch engraver and painter. His works are quite prolific, and he is regarded as one of the best Dutch Baroque artists. One of his...
This map, made circa 1596, is more than interesting: before all it is the result of the age when Europe began to know the world and to try to shape it after her...
La recherche du centre (et du Centre), tel est l’objectif de cet ouvrage passionnant de Mircea Eliade. L’auteur a bien cherché le centre dans ses écrits: il lui a consacré plusieurs recherches dont La nostalgie des origines (1971) et Psychologie et histoire des religions. A propos du symbolisme du “centre” (1951). Mais Le sacré et le profane peut être considéré comme le sommet de ses réflexions sur le sujet. Le livre est écrit en allemand, Das Heilige et das Profane, en 1956 puis traduit en plusieurs langues, dont le français et a eu un grand succès dans les sciences des religions et sciences sociales.
Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) was a Jesuit, an omniscient one: author, translator, theologian and mathematician. He was the first Westerner to translate Confucius into a European language and, most likely, the first Westerner to be...
Calenda – Géographie
